KE Jiajun: Floating: Curated by WANG Yaoli
Ke Jiajun often uses gray scale or cold tones to depict lonely and alienated imagery in his painting creations. The elements appearing in his constructed "Small Garden" are endowed with a mythical narrative in a calm and restrained manner, exploring the "divinity" hidden within individuals against the backdrop of an ordered world.
BONIAN SPACE is pleased to announce the solo exhibition, Floating, by artist Ke Jiajun, from August 24 to September 22, 2024. Curated by Wang Yaoli, the exhibition features over ten recent oil on canvas paintings by the artist, created after his first solo exhibition K’s Garden at BONIAN SPACE in 2023.
In his earlier works, Ke Jiajun focused on depicting a single subject within a spatial framework, often capturing a divine stillness or presenting fragmentary scenes of his constructed world. Like a meticulous creator, Ke Jiajun calmly and deliberately crafts an independent "small world" separate from reality, patiently establishing unshakable laws of operation for it. By this time, the world he created was beginning to take shape.
The new works presented in this exhibition demonstrate a richer narrative, further revealing the macro view of the fictional world that houses "K's Garden." For instance, in the triptych Boredom Era: Drifting, Ke Jiajun's largest painting so far, he depicts the journey of "white geese," symbolizing individual lives, as they wander from an unknown starting point to an endpoint. Along the way, they face choices, endure suffering, and experience countless moments of confusion and helplessness, all while knowing there is an inevitable end. At the same time, Ke continues exploring themes around the "fish," representing the masses, with paintings like Deep Sea, Hide, and Traveling Together, rich in biting satire. A sense of hopeless humor introduces a humanistic "crack" into the otherwise rational and orderly compositions.
Ke Jiajun, self-deprecatingly described as reclusive and pessimistic, seems unable to relax when contemplating existence or where one is headed. It might explain his cautious approach to color usage. He believes that other colors can only be added sparingly in a primarily gray-and-white palette. Ultimately, what can be painted in a painting?
"Fu Ou (the exhibition’s title in Chinese)," a water bubble indeed. In Buddhism, a single bubble in the vast ocean is used as a metaphor for the human body. Looking at Ke Jiajun's paintings, while they depict an "alternative world" as a microcosm of reality, what is more important is that we can observe the individual experiences within it from a panoramic perspective in another dimension. It allows us to quickly assume the role of the creator, calmly observing everything that unfolds, or we could resonate with a single bubble in the ocean.